The Latina/o Studies Association’s Executive Council has decided to extend the deadline to November 30, 2015 to submit proposals for our July 2016 conference. Our original CFP, we felt, did not make clear that we welcomed individual paper proposals. Although we have tried to highlight that the system would accept individual papers, workshops, panels, and poster sessions, many inquires continued to arrive.

The Latina/o Studies Association launched a new web page for the association today. Although still developing, the new design represents one of the priorities of the Executive Council to enhance the visibility of the organization.

Deliberating Latina/o Studies: Promiscuity, (In)civility, and (Un)Disciplinarity builds on the 2014 Chicago conference that asked participants to reflect on the past, present, and future of Latina/o Studies. That gathering and recent events made evident that, while the field and Latina/o demographics in the United States are growing, so too are the levels of economic disenfranchisement, incarceration rates, and gentrification. For 2016 we extend the idea of “imagining Latina/o Studies” to the practice of deliberating Latina/o Studies. This conference will consider the meaning, place, and potential of Latina/o Studies in the spirit of unhurried, intentional, and careful, yet productively “un-disciplined”, conversations. The conference theme seeks to disrupt facile constructions of citizenship and belonging by taking up the possibilities that (un)disciplinarity offers to Latina/o Studies. Thus, we extend a call to consider ourselves “promiscuous scholars” and move outside our intellectual comfort zones. We hope participants will engage the ways (in)civility has become increasingly deployed on university campuses to manage critique and dissent. (Un)disciplinarity draws attention to structural institutions and neoliberal projects such as prisons, gentrification, and educational systems that attempt to keep Latinas/os “in line”. We encourage deliberation on how we might build solidarity movements, cultivate new languages, and imagine coalitions of solidarity and new aesthetic movements.

Proposal Submission
The program committee welcomes proposals with diverse formats: individual paper proposals; panels of papers and moderators; roundtable discussions; workshops emphasizing participation by all session attendees; poster presentations from graduate students and/or community activists; or other creative formats. We also welcome proposals for special events such as screenings, readings, or performances. Submissions for participation should be submitted through the conference management website (http://lsac2016.exordo.com). Each submission will need:
● Name, institutional/organizational affiliation, discipline (if applicable), position or title. For sessions: list organizer first, then each presenter/moderator.
● Description of format (e.g. roundtable, panel) including audiovisual needs or special accommodations.
● A 500 word abstract, including a description of each member’s contribution for panels.

Location
Los Angeles County and specifically the City of Pasadena will serves as our setting for our second conference. Pasadena is conveniently situated approximately 12 miles from downtown Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles Times, Latinos are now the largest ethnic group in the state of California. Los Angeles County is home to one of the largest Zapotec indigenous communities and a growing self-identified Blaxican (Black Mexican) activist community. Simultaneously, California is a state with one of the highest Black and Brown incarcerated populations, an economy reliant on immigrants for the service labor industry, where only 16% of Latinos have some type of college degree. It is this complexity of simultaneous visibility and disenfranchisement that we hope sets a productive context for this conference’s deliberations.